Study found your vegetarian hot dog may contain meat and human DNA

Do you believe your hotdogs are healthier because they are vegetarian? Think again. According to Fox News, researchers at startup lab Clear Food tested 345 hot dogs from 75 different brands and found that 14.4 percent of them had some problematic ingredient in them. The startup uses "next-generation genomic technology" to analyze the world's foods at a molecular level and test their quality. What did they find? You vegetarian hot dogs may not be vegetarian at all.

The study found meat in hot dogs that were supposed to be vegetarian and pork in some that were labeled as kosher. More troubling, the research found even human DNA in two percent of the samples, part of which were also labeled as vegetarian.

"We encountered a surprising number of substitutions or unexpected ingredients. We found evidence of meats not found on labels, an absence of ingredients advertised on labels, and meat in some vegetarian products."
Clear Food

The report also found the following:

- 10 percent of vegetarian products contained meat;
- Labels of some vegetarian products exaggerated the amount of protein in the item by as much as 2.5 times.
- Vegetarian items accounted for 67 percent of the hygienic issues found in the report.
- Pork substitution in three percent of the samples. In most cases, pork was substituted for chicken or turkey.

These are probably enough facts to convince most people to think twice before purchasing hot dogs again, but in case you can't resist, here are some ideas of what to put on top of them:

12PHOTOS

Things to put on hot dogs

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Study found your vegetarian hot dog may contain meat and human DNA

Hot dogs with ketchup, mustard, lettuce, and pickles.

(Photo via Getty)

Classic hot dogs with ketchup and mustard.

(Photo via Getty)

A pair of hot dogs, fresh off of the campfire and topped with cheese, onions, chili and cilantro.

(Photo via Getty)

The frankfurters in Sonic's new lineup all start with a grilled, all-beef hot dog inside a "soft, warm bakery bun," and are each differentiated by their fixings: the All-American Dog has ketchup, mustard, relish, and chopped raw onions (386 calories); the Chili Cheese Coney is topped with chili and shredded cheddar cheese (420 calories); the New York Dog has spicy mustard, grilled onions, and sauerkraut (352 calories); and the Chicago Dog is topped with a pickle spear, relish, tomatoes, hot peppers, chopped raw onions, celery salt, and mustard, with poppy seeds on the bun (435 calories).